Rachel: The most toxic emotion you feel—that gut-punch of jealousy when you see someone else succeed—might actually be the most powerful creative tool you have. It's not a stop sign; it's a green light. And today, we're going to prove it. Justine: A green light? That sounds… dangerous. My jealousy usually just tells me to eat a pint of ice cream and scroll resentfully through their perfect Instagram feed. A green light to do what, exactly? Drive straight into a wall of self-pity? Rachel: A green light to get to work. That’s the core, counter-intuitive idea from the book we’re diving into today: Your Inner Critic Is a Big Jerk by Danielle Krysa. Justine: I love that title already. It’s so blunt. Rachel: It is. And what's fascinating is that Krysa isn't just an author; she's an artist and the creator of the world-famous art blog, The Jealous Curator. She literally built her career on the very emotion we're all taught to suppress. She had a 15-year hiatus from making art before starting the blog, which became this massive platform for discovering contemporary artists. Justine: Hold on, so the blog is called The Jealous Curator? She just put the feeling right out there in the title? That takes guts. Rachel: Exactly. And she argues that before you can even get to a place where you can transform a feeling like jealousy, you have to first get past an even more fundamental lie we tell ourselves.

Justine: Okay, I’m intrigued. What’s the lie? Rachel: The lie is that creativity is a special gift bestowed upon a chosen few, and that you’re either born with it or you’re not. Krysa’s first truth is that everyone is creative. It’s inherent. The problem isn’t a lack of creativity; it’s that we don’t own the title. Justine: That feels very true. It’s so much easier to say "Oh, I'm not a creative person" than to actually try and make something and risk it being bad. It’s a convenient out. Rachel: It is. And she shares this fantastic story about an artist named Trey Speegle. He was living in New York in the 80s, working at Vogue, surrounded by famous artist friends like Keith Haring. He was making art on the side, but he never called himself an artist. He felt like a fraud because he had a "real job." Justine: Ah, the classic imposter syndrome. I know it well. So how did he get over it? Rachel: In a really strange and wonderful way. He traveled a lot for work, and on the U.S. re-entry forms, under the 'Occupation' field, he just started writing 'Artist'. He did it over and over again, every time he came back into the country. He said that by repeatedly, officially declaring it to the U.S. government, he started to believe it himself. It was a case of faking it till you make it, but in a very literal, bureaucratic way. Justine: That is brilliant. He was reprogramming his own brain using a customs form. But okay, let's say you do that. You declare, "I am a writer," or "I am a painter." Then real life hits. What about the endless wall of excuses? The "I don't have time," "I'm too busy with the kids," "My apartment is too small to work in." Rachel: Krysa is ruthless about this. The chapter is literally called "Excuses Are the Enemy." She did a survey of her readers and found that all excuses basically fall into four buckets: Fear, Blame, Environment, and Time. Justine: Fear, Blame, Environment, and Time. That pretty much covers everything. Fear of failure, blaming your boss for your bad mood, your tiny apartment, and the eternal lack of time. Rachel: Exactly. And her solution is simple, if not easy: if you’re serious about your creative life, you have to schedule it. You have to treat it like a job. She tells this great little story about a friend of hers, an artist with a full-time job and two kids. The classic "no time" excuse. Justine: Yeah, that sounds like a legitimate reason, not an excuse. Rachel: You'd think so. But this woman decided to set her alarm for 5 a.m. every single morning. From 5 to 7:30, before her family woke up, before her day job started, that was her sacred, non-negotiable studio time. She called herself the "5 AM Artist." And she said those early morning hours were invigorating; they set the tone for her entire day. Justine: Wow. Okay, that’s some serious commitment. It’s not about finding eight hours, it’s about finding any hours and protecting them fiercely. Rachel: That's the tough love of it. It’s about moving from "I don't have time" to "I will make time." But even if you do all that—you claim the title, you make the time—you then sit down at your desk, face the blank page, and a new enemy appears. Justine: Oh, I know this one. It’s the little voice in your head that starts whispering all the reasons you’re going to fail. Rachel: Precisely. The inner critic. And sometimes, that inner critic has a megaphone because it’s echoing a voice from your past.

Rachel: Krysa's own story here is just devastating, and it’s the heart of the book. She was in her final year of a Fine Arts degree, a painting major. She was preparing for her final show and had a professor she really respected. Justine: Okay, I have a bad feeling about this. Rachel: You should. In a one-on-one meeting, the professor saw her new work and loved it. He told her she'd found her niche, that it was fantastic. She was on top of the world. The very next week was the big group critique, and a well-known visiting artist from New York was there. Justine: The stakes just went up. Rachel: Dramatically. She puts her work up, and the same professor who had praised her just days before, now in front of this important guest, completely tears her apart. He leads the class in a brutal critique and ends by looking her in the eye and saying, "You should never paint again." Justine: What? No. That’s unbelievable. That’s not a critique, that’s an execution. Rachel: It was. And she was so blindsided, so broken, she couldn't even defend herself. She graduated and, for almost fifteen years, she barely made any art. That one sentence from a person in power completely shut her down. Justine: That is just heartbreaking. It shows you how much power we give to external validation, especially from people we see as gatekeepers or mentors. That voice wasn't her inner critic, it was an outer critic that she then internalized for over a decade. Rachel: And that's her point. The inner critic often gets its script from these external sources—a parent, a teacher, a boss. Her advice is to first, recognize the voice. Then, give it a name. A silly, non-threatening name, like 'Gertrude'. It’s hard to be intimidated by a critic named Gertrude. And then, you have to actively talk back to it and prove it wrong. Justine: I like that. You separate it from yourself. It’s not you thinking you’re a fraud, it’s Gertrude being a jerk again. But what about when the criticism is happening in real-time? How do you build that thick skin? Rachel: She shares a contrasting story from the actress Autumn Reeser. During a theater school rehearsal, Autumn was having a terrible day and burst into tears instead of performing her solo. Her director followed her offstage and just screamed at her in front of everyone, saying she'd never make it in the business without a thick skin. Justine: Another wonderful mentor. The creative world is full of them, apparently. Rachel: Right? But instead of quitting, Autumn, though humiliated, came back the very next day and got back on stage. She proved to him, and more importantly to herself, that she couldn't be intimidated. She chose resilience in the moment. It’s a powerful reminder that while you can't control the criticism you receive, you can control your response. Justine: It’s the difference between a comment derailing you for fifteen years, and it derailing you for fifteen hours. That’s a powerful distinction. Rachel: And this ability to reframe, to take something that feels like a knockout punch and turn it into fuel, that brings us to the most radical idea in the book. It’s about the alchemy of turning the ugliest feelings into gold.

Justine: Okay, so this is where we get back to jealousy being a 'green light'. I'm still skeptical, but I'm listening. Rachel: This is the origin story of The Jealous Curator. After her long hiatus, Krysa started looking at art online again. And she’d see this amazing work and feel this one-two punch: first, a flash of inspiration, immediately followed by a wave of soul-crushing jealousy and the thought, "Why bother? I could never do that. It's all been done." Justine: Oh, I know that feeling. It’s the worst. It’s totally paralyzing. Rachel: Totally. But after months of this, she had a revelation. She decided to stop running from the feeling and instead, confront it. She started a blog with the express purpose of writing about the contemporary artists whose work made her jealous. She would post their art and write about why she loved it, why it sparked that green-eyed monster. Justine: Wow. So she didn't just ignore the feeling, she leaned right into it. She put it under a microscope. Rachel: She did. And she says something amazing happened. She wrote, "Somewhere along the way, that toxic, soul-crushing jealousy turned into inspirational, get-your-ass-back-into-the-studio motivation. What a relief." By celebrating the thing she envied, she transformed the poison into a cure. The jealousy became a compass, pointing her toward what she truly admired and wanted to work on in her own practice. Justine: That’s a profound shift. It’s not about wanting what they have, but understanding why you want it, and what it tells you about your own desires. The jealousy isn't the problem, it's a symptom. It's a signal. Rachel: It’s a signal! Exactly. And the same logic applies to failure. What about when you try to make something and it's just… objectively bad? Justine: You mean like everything I tried to bake during 2020? Yes, I'm familiar with that. Rachel: Krysa redefines failure completely. She says making a bad painting isn't failure. Writing a terrible first draft isn't failure. Failure is quitting. Failure is being too scared to even start. Everything else is just part of the process. She quotes Brené Brown: "There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period." Justine: So the goal isn't to avoid making bad things, it's to make peace with the fact that you will make bad things on the way to making good things. Rachel: Better than that—the goal is to sometimes make bad things on purpose! She champions the idea of having a "Bad Art Night." Get together with friends and have a competition to see who can make the ugliest, most ridiculous piece of art. It completely removes the pressure of perfection and just lets you have fun making something, which is the whole point.

Rachel: When you put it all together, it’s a complete mindset shift. You're not waiting for permission or for inspiration to strike. You claim your creative identity, you schedule the work like it matters, you learn to silence the critics—both internal and external—and you reframe your worst feelings as signposts pointing you exactly where you need to go. Justine: It’s about taking the power back from all these forces that we think control us. The professor, the inner critic, the clock, the feeling of jealousy. The book's ultimate message seems to be about putting the pencil, or the paintbrush, or the keyboard, firmly back in your own hand. No one else can wrestle it away from you unless you let them. Rachel: That’s it perfectly. It's about defiance. Creating in absolute defiance of all the things that tell you not to. Justine: So if listeners want to put this into practice today, what’s one concrete thing they can do? Rachel: I think the most powerful and unusual advice is to try the jealousy experiment. This week, find one thing you’re genuinely jealous of—an artist's incredible skill, a friend's successful new project, anything. And instead of letting it make you feel bad, just sit with it and ask: What is this telling me? Then write down one small, tiny action step it inspires you to take for yourself. Justine: I love that. It’s like a creative treasure hunt where the map is your own envy. And we'd love to hear about it. What's your inner critic's name? Or what's one excuse you're finally kicking to the curb? Let us know. Rachel: This is Aibrary, signing off.